Suspicion - S1 Death in a Small Town | E6 Shattered Faith

Episode Date: June 20, 2022

The small-town rumour mill is in overdrive. When Rose-Anne and Kent see a police car they expect to be pulled over.  Their extended family is torn – some say fight on, others say drop it. Then, an eerily familiar request from police. Come to the station, we have news. Audio sources: Toronto Star, CTV News London

The Billionaire Murders is brought to you by Havelock Metal, the only roof and siding you'll ever need. The following content contains discussions of child injury and death, including frank discussions and displays of emotion surrounding that loss. Listener discretion is advised. From the Toronto Star, I'm Kevin Donovan, and this is Death in a Small Town, Episode 6, Shattered Faith. Today's date is February 14, 2017. Time now is 12.02 p.m. Acting Detective Sergeant Todd Amlin and Detective Constable Joan Wilson will be having a discussion with Ken and Roseanne McClellan. They've requested this meeting in Petrolia as a result of some urgent information that's come forth.

The voice you have just heard is Todd Amlin, the lead Ontario Provincial Police investigator on Nathaniel's case since the OPP took over from the Strathroy detectives. It's 16 months after Nathaniel died. Amlin, a detective sergeant, recorded this without telling Roseanne and Kent. The audio is a bit muffled. I think the officer tucked a recorder inside his sport coat. Hello, ladies. Hey, John's here. Yeah. I figure if it's urgent, then we should all sit down.

The meeting is in Petrolia, 45 minutes' drive west of Strathroy. They're getting together there because Amlin is now area crime supervisor in Petrolia, but he still has carriage of the McClellan case. He's the detective who did the interview of Roseanne after Nathaniel's funeral, the one Roseanne called an interrogation. Amlin is very tall, slender, mid-forties, bald. He speaks casually, doesn't sound like a cop. The hello ladies greeting, it was directed at Roseanne, Kent,

and their nine-month-old son William, who Roseanne was pregnant with when Nathaniel died. I think Amlin was just trying to put everyone at ease. How's everybody? What's going on? Good. Look at that little whippet snapper. You can put him up on the table with him, all right? Roseanne has brought William into the station in a car booster seat.

She takes him out and holds him. At one point during the discussion, William decides to crawl around on the floor of the police interview room. Kent gets down on his hands and knees and follows his son. After what happened to Nathaniel, Roseanne understandably won't let William out of her sight.

After some small talk, Roseanne and Kent tell Amlin why they have asked for this meeting. They have serious concerns about the integrity of the police investigation. Now, to fix the time period in your head, this meeting takes place in the first part of 2017, about a year and a half after Nathaniel died. Police, first Strathroy and then the Provincial Force, the OPP, considered Roseanne and Kent the prime suspects for most of that time. Lately, the McClellans were hoping things had changed and they were trusting Amlin to find out what really happened to their son. A casual conversation at a Strathroy hockey rink had changed all that, put them on edge.

Roseanne tells Amlin and his partner she had just got her boys onto the ice that day when a woman she knows, her name is Charlene, approached her with a story. She said shortly after Nate's death, late in 2015, probably December, maybe early 2016, but she thinks it was December 2015 as it wasn't very long after Nathaniel died. Charlene was at the hairdresser's, a woman by the name of Jeannie McGuire. This woman, Jeannie, is married to Constable Mike McGuire on the Strathroy

Paradox Police Force. Jeannie informed Charlene that Nathaniel's death had been ruled an accident by the police, and that the investigation was over. Constable Mike McGuire was a veteran Strathroy police officer. He'd worked Nathaniel's investigation as a major case file coordinator for a time. His wife Jeannie is a hairdresser in Strathroy.

Constable McGuire, as Roseanne and Ken knew, lived across the road from Megan Van Hoof, the woman who ran the home daycare that was looking after Nathaniel the day he went to hospital. For the McClellans, this was yet another indication of what they had long believed was a cozy relationship between the babysitter and the local police. And then Jeannie, this wife of Constable Mike McGuire, went on to tell the following story of what happened to Nathaniel which was also heard by her husband, Mike McGuire.

So, in the morning on the day of the accident, this is Charlene's story, Nathaniel was behind the door at the McClellan house. Roseanne didn't know that I'm putting in my own name. She was just saying you. Roseanne didn't know Nathaniel was behind the door, and when Roseanne pushed the door open and knocked Nathaniel down,

he hit his head. Nathaniel cried and Roseanne consoled him. When Nathaniel stopped crying, Roseanne took him to Megan's place that morning. And then I said, I asked her if it was true that morning. And she said, Mrs. Fogg was told by Jeannie that the door incident happened.

That day, and that was Roseanne, she did not think there was anything wrong with Nate as he was not crying. So Roseanne just dropped him off for the day, not thinking there was anything wrong. And so then he went unconscious at the sitters and it went from there.

As Roseanne speaks, Amlin rubs a hand over his forehead, lowers his head and sighs. The story Roseanne has heard has the detail about the door bump, but the timing is different. The McClellans have insisted the door bump was minor and it happened the night before Nathaniel went to hospital. If you recall, the timing of this door bump was key, because if it had been severe enough to be fatal, Nathaniel would have been in distress long before he arrived at the sitters. In this version of the story, the one told to Roseanne at the hockey rink, the door bump happened on the Tuesday morning, just before

Roseanne dropped Nathaniel at Megan's daycare. Roseanne feels both confused and betrayed. You told me, but you told me that other people can't access the file. If you said other police officers don't know what's going on in your case, other police officers wouldn't know what I or Kent will do in our interview. How did this guy? What is so upsetting to the McClellans is not just that the rumor mill has the story wrong. It's that Strathroy officers, Mike McGuire in particular,

seem to have details of the case that only the OPP were told. Amlin raises his head, looks at his partner, then at Roseanne. In an active investigation, police are not supposed to talk about a case. Mike McGuire was on the file. We don't know. We have no names. So maybe it's time for us to get the names. Well, no, it's not. But he was involved in the investigation at the beginning.

No doubt. That's just fact. That's all I'm saying. I'm not commenting on anything you guys are talking about. I'm just saying he was on the file. Detective Amlin takes Roseanne over the story a second time. For Roseanne and Kent, who believe they are on the way to clearing their names in the community, this is a setback. Kent gets emotional. He tells Amlin how he feels like he is up against the police. So now I am scared. Okay. Because I can't fight for my son and fight against people that should be fighting for me.

This is not the first time Roseanne and Kent have heard stories of their son's incident passed around as gossip. They try not to be paranoid, but every time they see a police car in the rearview mirror, they get worried, wondering if they are being followed. Ken, in terms of you being scared, is it in relation to what you feel is going on with Strathroy PD? Yeah. Internally, more or less? Yeah.

You don't know what length they'll go to. I mean, this to me is quite a serious, this is a major crime. There's some more chit-chat at the end of the meeting, with Roseanne apologizing that she may have made a spelling mistake in the note she was handing over to Amlin, and Amlin saying, no problem, he's an English major, he can fix them. Amlin says they will look into the allegations and pass them on up the chain of command to his boss,

Detective Inspector Heidi Stewart. All this information will be put into a report that I will do today and tonight. I will call Heidi. I will let her know what's transpired along and most concerningly with the second portion of our conversation. Okay? She does not take that kind of stuff lightly, I'll tell you. Not that she takes anything lightly as a DI.

Not long after, Detective Sergeant Amlin was taken off the McClellan investigation and a new officer, Detective Inspector Pete Liptrott, was put in charge. Liptrott had more seniority and experience, and it's possible the force decided it was time for fresh eyes. Amlin wrote a short note to the McClellans, saying that because of the complaints they were making about the investigation, he was off the file. In an unrelated situation,

Amlin was criminally charged with sexually assaulting a female OPP officer over an incident that took place a decade before at the OPP Academy training facility. In his guilty plea, he admitted to entering a female officer's darkened room, jumping on top of her and, quote, dry-humping her. Amlin received a 12-month probationary order from the court and is still with the OPP, and according to the force, has maintained his rank. In her victim impact statement, the veteran female officer told court that the night it happened she was in her underwear, asleep on her bed in the dormitory

at the police training academy. Someone, she's referring to Amlin in her statement, entered her room. She wrote to the court, I believe I was about to be raped. Being a victim of rape is my biggest fear, as it is for most, if not all women. As I was fighting to get free of my attacker, my attacker released me, and only then did I see it was you. What did you do at that moment? You stood there and laughed at me. We'll be right back. This is Kevin Donovan. I've been around building and renovation projects my entire life, so I can tell you it's important to make your next roof the last one your house, cottage, or building will ever need. Do it once, do it right, do it now. Have luck metal. Request your quote today. It's fair to say that news of the charges against Detective Sergeant Amlin

further weakened Roseanne and Kent's faith in police. They had trusted Amlin. Now there was a new officer they did not know involved. This officer, Pete Liptrot, had told the McClellans that he had decided to get a new medical opinion, this one from experts at the Hospital for Sick Children in Toronto. The McClellans, having already heard the opinion of London experts, which backed their version of what happened to Nathaniel,

wondered at the need for a second opinion. As time passed, Roseanne and Kent were convinced that Nathaniel's death was being forgotten. They pursued a series of complaints to a body that investigates police, questioning the conduct of both the Strathroy and OPP detectives. In one section of their complaint, the McClellans alleged that some Strathroy officers were friendly with the babysitter's family.

An OPP officer, Nelson DaCosta, was assigned by the Independent Police Oversight Body to investigate. Now, this was not a criminal investigation by DaCosta. It was more of a review of police conduct, and the McClellans say they would have preferred a truly independent probe. DaCosta's two reports, one for each police force, cleared all of the officers involved, calling each allegation by the McClellans unfounded. I've read those reports and, in my opinion, they fall short of a complete investigation. Some of the key officers had retired and, as was their right, they declined to give interviews to DaCosta. Megan Van Hoof, the babysitter, also declined. I tried to speak with all of the police officers involved. The only one

who would talk to me was retired Strathroy Constable Mike McGuire. He was the one who was the original major case file coordinator on Nathaniel's investigation. McGuire lives across the street and down a few houses from the Van Hoofs. I was in my car driving down to speak to the McClellans in Park Hill one day when McGuire called me three years after I first started trying to interview him. He was responding to yet another message from me, this one telling him that I was close to publishing an investigative series on the case in the Toronto Star. I was with Stratford-Ricardock Police, retired back in 2016. McGuire had a long career as a police officer and was for many years the head of the local

police union. He was well known and well connected. He'd also been one of the officers assigned to that Baby Riker case, the one I told you about in a previous episode. That's a case where the 20-month-old boy died of complications after being scalded with hot coffee. That boy's mother and her ex-boyfriend were convicted of criminal negligence causing death and sent to jail. Soon after finishing that case, McGuire was assigned Nathaniel's.

What I'd like to say to you is I think there's a lot of misinformation going on concerning my involvement, or lack thereof, in this investigation. Because of the questions that you were posing, and other questions that people have been asking around town. I ask if there is any truth to the allegation that he was friends with Megan Van Hoof and her husband Brian. I do not know the Van Hoofs at all. To the best of my knowledge, I have never spoken with them. You don't know, I mean, Brian Van Hoof, they live across from you, just down a couple of, on Head Street. Yeah, they live up, I, now there's three houses. I know they live in one of three houses across the street and north of me. But I don't know which one of those three houses it is. I do not know them.

I do not socialize with them. I don't speak with them. I don't think I've ever dealt with them. I don't know them. I asked McGuire about NASCAR racing parties that some of the local guys host, including McGuire. I don't think they've ever been at my house. Okay. No. No. No. No.

I mean, I'll be honest, I'm sitting here racking my brain about that. Like, is there something going on that I have a little recollection of? But no, like, they've never been at my house. I've never socialized with them. Okay. I would not be, I would not know her at all. Like, absolutely wouldn't have, I have no idea who she is. McGuire told me his job on Nathaniel's case was to be the major case file coordinator,

a job that entails keeping track of all interviews and pieces of information that came in. He said he was a year from retirement, didn't need the overtime, so he asked to be removed. I went back to my regular duties, and I'll be very honest, well, I'm being very honest with you anyways. I specifically never asked any questions about this investigation of any of the officers that were working on it out of our office, because I asked not to be involved in it. How then, I asked, did his wife Jeannie, a hairdresser, come to know information about Nathaniel's case, including having specific, though factually wrong, information about Nathaniel's injuries,

and when the door bump occurred? Here's the exchange we had. Did you ever hear that there was an allegation from the family that, I believe I'm getting this correct, that your wife had somehow had some information about the previous injuries and had spoken about it at her hair salon uh i well i think what was said was that my wife had information that the investigation was no longer going on not that she knew anything about the investigation just that she had heard it you know it was over and how would she heard that I don't know where that information came from my wife and I

never spoke about that I have no recollection of ever telling her that and I didn't know anything about the investigation. So when it, I didn't know, the only time I knew that that investigation apparently was slowing down or over, or I really don't know where it was, was right shortly before I retired. Because I'd seen them boxing it up in the office. I heard lots of stories of small-town chatter about Nathaniel's case. It's clear to me that officers who were not supposed to be talking about the investigation were. Strathroy is a small town. I know some Strathroy officers do know the Van Hoofs.

But I was never able to prove that there was any sort of special influence exerted. I do think Kent and Roseanne were treated as outsiders. It's funny, they just live 30 minutes away, but they're not native to Strathroy. What I can tell you is that the more the McClellans kept asking questions, kept pursuing answers to their son's death, there was some significant collateral damage

in relationships very close to their home. A family rift developed, with some members of the extended McClellan family urging them to continue asking questions, while others counseled them to move on with their lives. My name is Richard Van De Will, and Roseanne is my daughter. We're sitting in Richard's kitchen in his home in Langton, Ontario. Richard has craggy, strong features, wispy light brown hair tinged with grey, and he's got sharp blue eyes.

If he was an actor, he'd get all the FBI agent roles. But like his daughter, and most others in the family, Richard was a teacher. He eventually left the classroom, became a tobacco farmer, had 110 acres at the height of it. He's retired now. His first wife, Roseanne's mother, passed away years ago, and Richard remarried to Veronica. I asked him to describe Roseanne. She was like most other little kids, I guess. She was always a good student, and oh, she enjoyed school school she was good in athletics what were her

sports uh track and field track and field running um i i like to run myself and so the kids all got into cross country but rosanne was fast as well as uh distance so and oh she played basketball in high school and did very well there um Quite competitive, I guess you'd say. And she worked on the farm. All our kids worked on the farm with us. They started on the young side, I suppose, but they did a good job. Nathaniel's passing was a terrible shock. Richard has so many memories of his grandson.

He had a very loud voice, I can tell you that. I was sometimes surprised when I would hear him go. I remember in church when Gabe was an altar server, and he saw him, and they were near the front of the church, not right at the front, and he yelled out, Hi, Gabe! He just had a loud, booming voice. For his size, he had a big voice. And he was a nice little guy. You know, he liked to play, and he was wrestling with his dad on the floor. All of them were there. It was nice, just learning a few words, you know, when it happened.

Richard has his own theory. You wonder how it could happen. And my first thought, when I actually found out how serious it was, was that there would have been a man. It almost had to be a man. You know, like, that was my first thought. How would a woman hit that hard? It's not, they don't do that.

And, but they never, as far as I know, they never looked into that. It just, to me, it seemed like the damage was so bad that that, you know, that doesn't happen by falling down stairs, you know. And he had no bruises anywhere else on his body. As a father and grandfather, Richard has concerns that go beyond what happened to Nathaniel. Those concerns caused a rift that would be raw for years. Knowing his daughter, he was not surprised how focused Roseanne was digging into the case. I tell Richard, I've met a lot of grieving relatives over the years, but never one quite like Roseanne was digging into the case. I tell Richard, I've met a lot of grieving relatives over the years, but never one quite like Roseanne. Richard said it's in her nature to get the answers to questions,

but in the beginning, she was scared. They were just plain, in the beginning, they were afraid of the police. Roseanne was afraid to go into Strathroy's. They were afraid of the police. And the police has a tremendous amount of power. You know, you do not want to get a policeman mad. And it's frustrating in one way. But when you say she's good at finding out things,

I rather expected that she would get so wrapped up in it that my fear was that she wouldn't be paying enough attention to the family that's there. And so I sort of got on the wrong side of her to start with, because I said, you know, careful what you're doing here. You're dealing with police and people don't win when they go against the police. That made for some uncomfortable conversations. Richard would get on the phone to Roseanne and, in a fatherly way, try and get her to spend less time on the son she had lost and more on the family she still had. It was one of those times when he observed how the role of a parent changes with time.

As the kids grow older, it always pretty well happens. You may say the same things, but they don't listen as well. They don't pay as much attention anymore. It's just a fact of life. And in this case, a case like this, the people she wants to be around are the people who agree with her. You know?

And if you hold back a bit, then she'll get angry. Our conversations on the phone now are mostly about Nathaniel. She just talks and mostly about Nathaniel she just talks and talks about Nathaniel say hi to all the kids and everything you know but when you talk to Roseanne alone it's just gonna be about Nathaniel and she doesn't come on the phone as often we the relationship has changed a bit and Kent is very very busy and that's how he handles it.

He just keeps himself so busy. And again, the kids are missing out there. I haven't seen them wrestling on the floor since it happened. It has a profound effect on the family. It's hard to explain. I'm not a good talker, but things change.

That conversation I had with Richard was a while back. Things between Roseanne and her dad really did improve with time, with both of them figuring out the hot buttons and how to avoid them. And Roseanne and Kent are good parents, of that I have

no doubt. But I have to say, I had similar thoughts when talking to the McClellans over these many years, wondering, myself, was this the time to move on? Kent called me one day to tell me how he felt frozen from something that had happened. He'd taken the older boys to a local ski hill one day, got them in their gear and onto the hill, but he just could not join them. A sort of mental paralysis had gripped him. He sat in the car thinking of Nathaniel

while his living children were out enjoying the snow. Kent reached out to me later that day to talk over his feelings. It started out really well, but it, yeah, it just was one of those bad days. And I really do love it. It just, for some reason, just didn't work today. But every time they came down the hill, they saw me and waved, and I got to see them do jumps and turns and everything.

They had a really good day. Richard, Roseanne's dad, worries as any parent would. We've lost something, you know? We've lost something there. Do you think you'll get it back? I really don't really think so. Not the way it was. I don't think it'll ever go back. I'm hoping it gets better. I do think it'll get better. But back the way it was, not likely. Not likely.

That's not the solution. They want to know what happened, and I don't think they'll ever know what happened. In June 2021, a year and a bit into the pandemic, the Toronto Star published my five-part series, Death in a Small Town, exploring Nathaniel's case. I'd worked on it on and off since 2017. The OPP and Strathroy police were still refusing to speak to me, saying only that it was an ongoing

investigation, and they were still awaiting a medical opinion from the Hospital for Sick Children in Toronto. I gave the police one month's warning, telling them what was going to be in the story, waited as long as I promised, and then the series hit the front page. Exactly one week later, the McClellans received a call from a senior OPP officer. How are you? Oh, good. How are you doing this morning? It's Wednesday, June 23rd, 2021. The McClellans are rushing around home, getting ready for a big day. Luke, the second oldest McClellan boy, is graduating grade eight. Now there is a police

officer on the phone, a senior officer, Detective Superintendent Tina Chalk of the OPP. It was a chilling call to receive. Years ago, an innocuous call like that led to what Roseanne and Kent say was a grueling interrogation by the OPP. So I just wanted to let you in on a little bit about why we wanted to meet. And we've been trying, you know, typically and especially, we really wanted to meet you in person to give you the kind of news that we're giving you today. Next time on Death in a Small Town. Members of the Strathroy Care Doc Police Service

and the Ontario Provincial Police, under the direction of the OPP Criminal Investigation Branch, arrested a Strathroy resident following a joint investigation in the death of a 15-month-old child. Death in a Small Town was researched, written, and narrated by me, Kevin Donovan, and produced by Raju Mudder, J.P. Fozo, and Sean Pattenden. Additional production was done by Andrea MacDonald, Kelsey Wilson, and Brian Bradley.

Photography by Lucas Olenek. Music and sound design for the series created by Sean Pattenden. From the Toronto Star, I'm Kevin Donovan, and this is Death in a Small Town.